Page 48 of Falling Backwards (The Edge of Us #1)

Luke takes a breath and runs a hand back through his raven hair, mussing it. My fingers want to both fix it and muss it even more.

There is such chaos in me.

Not just because the whispers of him accepting my apology mean everything to me or because I’m dying to touch him again or because he’s a sight for sore eyes despite that it’s only been a day since I last saw him, but also because I still don’t want to hear his explanation. I’m hurt all over again; I’m hurt in advance. The cracks that have been in my heart may have repaired somewhat from us dealing with my half of our mess, but when it comes to his half….

This is so important, though.

I know it was hard for him to hear what I had to say, and he listened anyway. It’s my turn now. We’re in this together.

He’s right about us needing to get everything out. My friends are right. So is the rest of my heart, which was wondering in flickers even before yesterday whether our agreement to block the past out was a good idea—it could sense the answer was no.

So I don’t stop him before he can start, and I won’t stop him even after he has started. He gave me my chance, and I’ll give him his. I won’t cower away like I did when he tried running after me all those years ago.

“One night…”

he says quietly.

I do tremble, though.

“…Jayden and I got drunk on some really expensive tequila he stole from his brother. We each bet the other that we wouldn’t be the first to throw it up, and he said whoever lost should have to do something embarrassing at school—something of the winner’s choosing—as payback for wasting all the pricy liquor. I asked him why he wanted to make such a game out of it, and he said he was bored, and he told me not to be a pussy, and…that was it. It sounds lame, but I didn’t question him any more or think to tell him no for any reason. I just went with it. And I turned out to be the loser of the bet. Jayden decided that the embarrassing thing I had to do was—was go out with a random girl he thought….”

My trembles are worsening.

Luke gives me a look that’s sad and imploring. He clenches and unclenches his jaw, his fists.

“He had all these girls picked out who he thought were unattractive, and he said I had to date one of them for a month and take her to prom.”

…What?

I stare at him, trying to process that. An ache stirs behind my eyes from how hard I frown.

Even though I don’t like Jayden, the self-conscious parts of me judder to life. He thought I was unattractive and he made it part of a bet, a joke, a game? Just for fun because he was bored?

Knowing that sends hot blood rushing into my face. The scar beneath my bangs prickles so much it almost stings. It’s only when I feel the pull of my sweater around my midsection that I realize I’ve curled my arms around myself and fisted the fabric.

Luke’s cheeks have gone red too. His eyes are wrought with understanding and guilt and so, so much sadness. One of his arms crosses over his own stomach and he shoves the other hand back through his hair again.

“He said I had to do it or he’d tell his brother I drank his tequila and I’d owe Jayden two hundred bucks just for the hell of it.”

He lowers that hand to rub at his chest, like there’s an ache there.

“And I know that sounds fucking stupid. I know I wasn’t obligated to do shit just ’cause he told me to. But that’s just it: I know that. Young me didn’t. I didn’t have a handle on myself and I was caught up in how there wasn’t two hundred dollars just lying around my bedroom and how I didn’t wanna get in trouble for something I hadn’t even done by myself. And it—”

his voice cracks.

“—Jesus, Maggie, it didn’t seem like it’d be that big of a deal anyway a-and I’ve come to realize it’s not just because I was sixteen and an idiot. It was also because I didn’t feel like I even mattered very much. What my dad left me with…there was that boiling anger, but there was also that deep, echoing, freezing-cold feeling that I couldn’t name for the longest time, and now I know it was despair. Despair made up of the heartache and loneliness and inadequacy. God, but I didn’t even just feel inadequate, I felt like a throwaway. Like it had been easy for my own parent to leave me because I didn’t matter. So why would some random girl give enough of a damn about me to…?”

He puts a hand over his mouth and I put one over mine too.

He doesn’t let out a soft sob like I do, but I can see the tension in him and it makes me think he’s only barely refraining.

He looks at me with blue eyes suddenly getting ready to overflow before he hangs his head.

Silence sits between and all around us while the vulnerability in him wrenches at my heart.

‘I’m not very impressive, Maggie,’ I remember him telling me not all that long ago. ‘I never have been.’

His words right now aren’t only coming from him wanting to make things right with me. They’re also revelations from trauma he didn’t always understand.

I believe that, and I believe him, without a shred of doubt.

A few minutes ago, I was sitting solidly with the chaos in myself. Now I’m getting a mere glimpse of the kind of chaos a young person feels when one of their parents walks out of their life. And for that parent to not even walk far enough away that their child won’t see them being happy with another family? For that parent to cozily settle into new routines and father-child relationships and special time spent with people who aren’t the kid standing just outside the glow of the porch light? My God.

And maybe Luke is still working on understanding what that did to him. Maybe it’s why he said he was keeping this latest stuff with his dad, whatever it is, away from me—he said he hasn’t wanted to so much as think about it, and maybe that’s because it’s still overwhelming to him.

There’s so much more to think about regarding all of it, but it’ll have to wait. He’s lifting his head, sniffling, wiping beneath his eyes, clearing his throat; he’s ready to keep talking.

I knot my fingers together in my lap and listen.

“Why would a random girl give enough of a damn about me to be upset when things didn’t work out?”

His voice is a little lower now, more coarse.

“How could I wound someone if there was no chance I’d be important enough for them to connect with? I wasn’t consciously asking myself those questions, but I felt them somehow. They were in me somewhere. I can remember thinking I was nothing remotely special. So even having heard Jayden’s whole idea, I didn’t say no because I didn’t think for a second that whatever girl I ended up with might be damaged by it. And that’s on top of me being a flat-out stupid kid.”

He shakes his head.

“I thought I’d be lucky if I could get a girl to not kick me to the curb before prom. Thought that was the only risk there was.”

My stomach churns. My throat is sore as I swallow past the lump that has come up in it.

“So I agreed to the plan. It was simple in theory, you know? I wasn’t gonna attempt to bond with the girl, but I’d be nice and respectful to her until it was time to part ways, which would happen without issue because she’d see it as just some fling with me and high school flings don’t last and everyone knows it. Then the game would be over and I’d have kept my money out of Jayden’s pocket and my ass out of trouble.”

Luke holds my gaze. I hold his right back.

Moments tick by without him continuing.

It doesn’t take long for me to notice it looks like he’s struggling to do it.

He crosses and uncrosses his arms. Shifts his weight from one foot to the other. Crosses his arms again. Draws a thin breath.

“When I drew your name out of his hat, I was surprised. I was relieved.”

His voice is thinner too.

“I knew your name. I knew your face ’cause I’d been noticing how pretty you were since the ninth grade. I was just too nervous to ever talk to you, and I remembered how shy you seemed, too, every time we happened to look at each other and you smiled at me. There wasn’t a single thing about you that I found unattractive, so I didn’t understand Jayden’s opinion about you, but I knew if I told him, he’d make me pick someone else.”

Suddenly, the way he’s looking at me is a swift pull backwards through eight long years.

It’s reserved and reluctant and riveted—he looks at me in the most gently fucking riveted way, like we’re sixteen again and nothing has ever taken hold of him the way my attention has and it does make him nervous, and it makes his heart skip beats the way having his attention makes my heart skip beats, and it’s scary and amazing and significant.

We’re here, too, though, not just in the past.

We’re grown up, not sixteen.

We’re in this look as fiercely as we are because he still feels what fuels it, not only because it’s a vivid memory.

And I still feel it.

“He would’ve made me pick someone else,”

he says again, even more faintly.

“I didn’t want that. I didn’t wanna have to spend time with anyone else. If I was gonna take up space in someone’s life and hope she would deal with me long enough to fulfill my end of the bet, I—I wanted it to be you.”

Here, his voice falters.

Here, my heart climbs into my throat.

His handsome features crease with aching sincerity.

“Magnolia…I didn’t think you would ever care about me.”

My own tears finally surge back up.

With a sharp breath, I drop my face into my hands to try to hide—I don’t know why since Luke already knows this hurts for me and for him on top of all the other emotional things that have been said, and he has cried, too, and—

Quick thuds. A light gust of air. Gentle hands wrapping around my wrists as a solid presence settles right in front of me, brushing my uninjured knee.

He has run over here and knelt before me.

The heavy sob that fact gets out of me cannot be hidden. My crying cannot be held back.

I love his closeness, his touch, his determination to pour his heart out to me.

I despise him being robbed of his self-worth and despise the coloring-in of the bleak betrayal I’ve lived with for so long.

“Maggie,”

he murmurs throatily.

My crying shakes me and I shake my head, yet I don’t have it in me to try to pull away or silence him.

“Baby, things went so differently from how I expected them to. I didn’t feel like I was anything special, but you did. And I didn’t believe being around you would lead anywhere, but I was wrong. I expected absolutely nothing and you turned out to be everything.”

It feels like there are fifty things I want to fire back and ask and accuse him of. Feels like there’s no way to decide which to go with, so I might just choke on all of them.

But as he tenderly, stutteringly swipes his thumbs back and forth over the backs of my hands, those things get cleared away until only one remains. One thing he mentioned earlier, sending my stomach into a breathtaking twist. One thing I have been wondering about for a very long time.

I lower my hands to my lap again. His shift to enclose them, warm and secure, and I look at how perfect that sight is even with my quivering vision warping it.

“You really didn’t fake ca-aring about me?”

My voice is frail, my breaths catching.

“It really was as real as it f-felt?”

“Yes, it was real,”

he tells me again, heartfelt.

“I just fucked it up. I didn’t fake it, Maggie, I just fucked it up.”

I was right. I wondered about that, and I was right.

That old weight eases.

I try to measure out my breaths, try to calm them.

“You sh-should’ve t-told me what was going on. You shouldn’t have let me fi-ind out the way I did.”

“You’re right. But by the time I realized that, I had no idea how to do it.”

He lifts my hands and I follow them with my eyes, breath catching anew as I watch and feel him press them to his chest. Then my tears are blinked away enough that I can properly meet his blue gaze as he keeps talking.

“The plan got derailed not just when you found out about it but also long before then, when I canceled it in my mind because I’d realized you were a beautiful person and I didn’t wanna keep going on a lie. I kept feeling like I needed to tell you I’d lost that bet, kept feeling like I needed to give you the truth and let you decide whether you still wanted me, but I was scared of how you’d react. You were so goddamn golden through all my dullness and my shadows, and the more of that I got, the worse I felt about how I started out with you. Never in a million years would I have thought we’d fall for each other, but we did, and I didn’t wanna lose you. So I kept letting the truth sit. And I was too young and dumb to understand that that kind of decision never works out. Keeping secrets never works out. So things went the way they went and I lost you anyway.”

I sniffle and…

…nod.

Luke’s eyebrows lift lightly. His eyes slip over and over my face.

“I didn’t only hurt you,”

he whispers.

“I hurt myself too.”

I whisper, too, sadly.

“And then I hurt you.”

His throat moves with his swallow. He gives a nod of his own.

I uncurl my hands within his so I can touch the front of his shirt, flatten my hands against him. His heart thumps under my right palm.

“We both did the wrong thing.”

The sigh he lets out is full and heavy. I find myself copying it as he presses my hands more firmly to his chest.

“Yeah, we did.”

And I find the chaos in me is quieting.

No, not just quieting—it’s dwindling, subsiding, leaving.

There are no words to describe how welcome the still quietude that’s growing in its place is.

But other words are building on my tongue.

“You used to feel like my safe place,”

I tell him.

“And then you didn’t anymore. I was so messed up about it, Luke, and then we didn’t talk at all after everything went to hell, and then years went by and things just got tucked away, not better. Then we started working together and all that resentment came back up, and you still didn’t feel safe to my soul—there was no more laughter or comfort or—”

My throat tightens.

“There was just…abrasion. And animosity. And us feeling like we couldn’t stand each other.”

I can tell he feels the echoes of those things just like I do; he’s wincing, nodding again.

“But,”

I say softly.

“you were still there when I needed you. When I needed help with Kyle, when I needed protecting. And I realized I did still feel safe with you. And the more time we spent together…. I didn’t realize how much I missed you until you were a little bit mine again, and then you were really mine, not pretending because of Kyle or some stupid bet. Yet things were still tucked away.”

I absorb his perfect face, his unguarded eyes. The promise of peace is there; his chaos has gone too.

I refuse to spend another second not promising peace back to him.

“I don’t wanna carry our mistakes around with us anymore. For real this time.”

I pause, then add with a swell of that peace through my body.

“They’re not tucked away anymore. We’ve faced them. Now I’m ready to put them down if you are.”

In the space of a breath, his hands are away from mine, one cupping my cheek and the other sliding under my hair to the side of my neck. Sweet tingles explode beneath the touches and I can’t keep in a soft breath of a gasp, can’t keep from tilting my face into his palm.

“I’m ready,”

he tells me.

“I want you. I want us to have what we would’ve had if I hadn’t been stupid.”

The smile I give in to wobbles slightly.

“Or if I’d been able to trust that you were sorry, instead of harming you too.”

His lips curve into a smile that is also a little wobbly.

That gaze is steady, though, just like mine is.

I recall the night we decided to stop pretending to date, when he said he didn’t want to reclaim our old good days but wanted to move ahead and be happy together as we are now. It sounded right, but in this moment, I agree with that and with what he has just said. It’s okay to yearn for both because we are both.

I have to say as much.

“I want what we would’ve had, too, and I also want what we do have.”

And I wonder if I need to explain what I mean by that—he may not be connecting the dots—but I only wonder it for short seconds.

“You took the words out of my mouth,”

he says.

“I said that thing a second ago and then remembered kind of saying the opposite when we became a real couple. I was just about to tell you I actually want it both ways.”

Just like that, the boy has me grinning.

He’s instantly copying me again and I love it, love the contagiousness, the warmth.

I love the ease.

For the first time in years, I look at Luke Bramhill and I feel an uninterrupted, untainted, undeniable sense of ease.

His voice comes again, gently.

“I have to say it to you one more time, though: I’m sorry for what I did to you when I was young and stupid. I’m sorry I involved you in Jayden’s terrible game and caused you that pain. I’ve been sorry and I would take it back if I could. It killed me that I hurt you, and if I could, I would take it back and be smarter and better. And I know apologizing doesn’t undo anything. I explained myself, but it doesn’t excuse me. Still, I need you to know that aside from telling you you’re my ten and that you completely own my heart, this apology is the truest thing I’ve ever said.”

More sentiments I feel all the way through myself.

I finally move a hand from his chest, lift it to curl my fingers against his jaw. His eyes fall closed with relief I share in.

“I believe you,”

I murmur.

“And I forgive you. You own my heart, Luke. You’re my ten too.”

My fingertips slip up the side of his face, over his temple, into his hair; he nuzzles them and I swear I feel a faint shiver go through his body. It completes some tiny part of me.

I add.

“I’m sorry again. I’m forever sorry for the flyers—for the lies and for the one truth I never should’ve shared. I don’t feel anymore like those things were fair. Even though I was suffering, I didn’t have to choose spite and revenge. I’m sorry I chose those things because I was young and stupid.”

He reopens his eyes into mine. His thumb goes over my cheekbone, and back, and forth, delicately.

“I believe and forgive you too.”

His words settle softly on the air.

We both seem to take the same full, clear breath.

And it’s…real. This sweeping peace and equilibrium and….

Warm breath guides a hushed groan against my fingers as their tips drag over Luke’s lips, his hair abandoned.

This adoration. So clearly real.

My other hand slides up to the nape of his neck. Suddenly, my lower back is wrapped in one of his arms—he urges me to the edge of the big chair, shifting forwards himself until he’s kneeling right between my legs, bringing my body against his. Breathless, I drop my fingers from his lips to his shoulder and I try to move my hurt knee even farther out of the way as I clutch him closer—as he clutches me closer, as we—

“Please kiss me,”

I barely get out.

His hand on my face swoops around into my hair. Our mouths meet in a fervent rush, pressing firmly and flawlessly together.

I actually don’t know if he kissed me or if I kissed him. But we’re damn sure kissing each other now.

And I can’t believe how good it feels.

I’ve been close to bursting from us finally talking about what happened in high school—I’ve been weak in the lungs, dizzied, almost sick even as I’ve been run through with undeniable love for him. I didn’t think I had room for anything else. But this kiss, this embrace, this physical show of us still wanting each other and of us still belonging together after facing everything we were afraid of…the vulnerability of it hasn’t only shouldered in amongst everything else. It’s also taking over. And as it does, it changes all that anxious weight into sweet happiness and longing. Once and for all, I throw out the parts of my brain that have been lurking around our wounds so the parts that crave healing can soar free.

We melt away into parting lips and touching tongues, and into the warm strength of his back beneath the palm I’ve snuck into his shirt, and into my not-hurt leg wrapping around him with the help of his hand.

Until my hips go forwards on him and it moves my other knee wrong somehow, stirring a jolt of pain and pulling me out of the kiss. I whimper and then groan and try to soothe the discomfort with a little more shifting while I go back to Luke’s mouth.

He makes a low, husky sound. His hold on my leg slides firmly to just below my ass, carefully urging me even tighter against him, nearly getting a shiver out of me. He gives my bottom lip a tug of a kiss, then moves to my jaw.

“If you weren’t hurt,”

comes his equally low voice, tinged with breathlessness.

“I don’t think I could keep from lying you back and devouring you right here and now.”

His fingertips move to brush just between my thighs and I barely stifle a gasp, but an obvious shiver does claim me now, inching me closer to him still. Then there’s heat whispering at where his body is pressed against the center of me, and it worsens with the gentle rock of him there and how his hair feels in my fumbling fingers. With my knee acting up, it’s only in flickers that I’m able to imagine his mouth being where those fingertips are instead of on my face—I’ve never had or wanted that before, but I suddenly want it with him—and then as I remember us being in his bed, those flickers bring imaginings of more, of all.

Nothing makes me wish harder that I didn’t have this stupid injury.

Not wanting to be able to walk and work without wincing. Not wanting to sleep comfortably. Not even wanting to get back to exercising.

I don’t know what to do other than nod big and stamp my lips to his cheek once, twice, my exhalation stumbling. His sigh is the same as he lowers my leg from around himself and just hugs me; he kisses my cheek, too, slowly, and we melt together in a different way from a minute ago.

Like coming home.

I remember this, too, from when we were in his bed: us agreeing that being with each other is like coming home.

For a few moments, I try to compose my breathing, my heart rate. Then I tell him.

“I missed you. Even though it was only a day.”

“Doesn’t matter that it was only a day. I missed you too.”

His face drops to the crook of my neck and he inhales there.

“Can you stay? Or do you need to go back home?”

“I am home.”

Although I didn’t mean to let that out, I can’t manage more than a slight blush—not when Luke hugs me harder.

“Damn right,”

he whispers.

I nuzzle his neck in return and add in kind.

“But yes, I can stay.”

For the first time since I walked up the stairs outside, I really think about Emma and Joy.

“I just have to tell my friends. They’ve been down in Emma’s car.”

Our hugging slips to an end, and I see the surprise on Luke’s face.

“Have they really?”

“Yeah. They knew I was nervous and everything, so they came with me.”

I shrug.

“Plus, even though we haven’t seen Kyle in a long time, they didn’t want me to go anywhere alone.”

He nods in clear understanding and approval.

“Absolutely. I’m so glad they did that for you.”

After a moment, he turns hesitant.

“Do they hate me?”

That gets a smile out of me, and at first, I think it’s strange. Why would I think his question is endearing? But I’m quick about knowing why: he cares. He cares what my best friends think of him because he cares about me.

I shake my head.

“No, they don’t hate you.”

One corner of his lips lift in tentative hope…and amusement.

“Not even Emma?”

Now I laugh a little, and so does he.

“No,”

I say.

“She was mad before, but it’s just because she wants me to be happy and so when I’m not happy, she jumps into protective mode.”

“I get that so much.”

He chuckles more.

“I simultaneously respect her, appreciate her, and am scared of her.”

We crack up together again.

“But,”

he goes on.

“I’m not gonna get on her bad side again ’cause I’m never gonna hurt you again.”

As soon as the words are out of him, his eyes soften and grow serious.

“I mean…nothing is perfect all the time, so we’ll both hurt each other here and there as time goes on. We won’t be able to help it ’cause people aren’t perfect.”

His hands find and wrap around mine.

“Those times will be different, though, you know? Different from all this, even though we’ll keep learning and getting better just like we have here. ’Cause I’ll never break your heart again.”

One might think these are scary or unsettling things to hear, but they aren’t. All I find in them is comfort. A promise of perseverance through the obstacles we’ll encounter not because either of us doesn’t deserve the other but because relationships simply aren’t always easy.

Just because it won’t always be easy doesn’t mean it won’t be entirely and eternally worth giving ourselves to.

I nod.

“Yeah, Luke.”

“You know what I’m trying to say?”

“I do.”

I squeeze his hands, take a steadying breath.

“Things won’t always be perfect, but you’re the only person I wanna make and fix mistakes with.”

I shake my head.

“I won’t break your heart again either.”

The smile that brings out of him is, all at once, boyish and soft and moved and wise and confident and calm.

And then it’s just happy.

I mirror it, of course.

“Deal, Maggie Moss,” he says.

“Deal,”

I echo perhaps unnecessarily.

Luke smiles more, and so do I.

“Come on, let’s go talk to your friends for a minute.”

My heart does a happy little dance at his suggestion—though his moans and groans about standing from kneeling for so long are joined by my fresh whimpers about standing with my stupid knee.

I’m not looking forward to going down those stairs and then back up. It’s not going to feel good.

But the worst of my wounds has been taken care of, and that feels nothing short of incredible.